Good Ad Bad Ad

In which a leading advertising expert picks some of the best and worst around.

Dave Buono Guidi, joint creative director of St. Luke's, is bored by a tired old gag but uplifted by The Sun's `party political broadcast'.

the sun TBWA Simons Palmer

What knocked me out about this is that it just doesn't look like a Sun ad. In the past, I think The Sun has been guilty - and its advertising agencies certainly have - of propagating the view that it's just a bit of a laugh, and that it doesn't care that it treats its readers like idiots. But this ad recognises that people who read The Sun are the real fibre of Britain - it is the biggest-selling paper - and rejoices in that.

It's just so simple. It doesn't feel it has to tell you a story: all it's doing is saying that people all over the county read The Sun, without judging them. The ad shows you various people reading the paper, such as workmen, women in the hairdressers, and a girl getting her buttocks tattooed - working-class people who in any other ad would be ridiculed when, in fact, they're like the majority of people in this country. It's not the newest technique in the book, but it all works so smoothly - and the fact that it's in black and white helps.

There's a big stigma attached to The Sun in this industry, but suddenly, this ad has come along, celebrating normality, and also what it's like to be British. It made me feel proud, almost. The end-line is: "Dedicated to the people of Britain", and you feel like you've just watched a party political broadcast rather than an ad. And you think: "I want to join that party."

I think it's going to work so much better than those ads that just say "No Sun, No Fun". The paper's never going to change, and I guess neither are the people who read it, so the least you can do is treat them with a little bit of dignity.

jeep grand cherokee orvis Delaney Fletcher Bozell

This looks like a Levi's ad, and it has a Levi's-type story, which is really tiresome. There are two blokes on a fishing trip, one of whom falls into some quicksand. And, because it's only a 30-second ad, the other guy has only got a very short time to pull him out of the mire. (Advertising agencies are always trying to tell over-complicated stories in incredibly short spaces of time.)

But he does pull the guy out, with these amazing gizmos he's got on his 4-wheel-drive Jeep - beautifully and very cleverly illustrating all the different attributes of the car that the client wanted putting in.

Then, at the end, there is a really funny gag - though I mean that sarcastically. The guy who's been pulled out of the sand is covered in mess from the neck down, and the Jeep driver looks at the leather upholstery that he's got as standard, indicating that there's no way he's getting in and sitting on that. Instead, he makes his companion sit on the roof, and drives off.

Everything about it is just so traditional. It's Eighties advertising, and it's so unmemorable. This ad and the Sun ad operate in the same medium, and on probably the same timescale, but while The Sun has done something that really sticks out, Jeep have given you an old gag and hope you're going to laugh.

I don't quite know what the response is going to be, because it doesn't feel like it's been done for the people who are actually going to drive the car. It hasn't been done to entertain; it's been done just to fulfil what the creatives believe is good advertising - something that is well shot, and that they'll get a nice trip out of.